Kinda feel like this is tariff bait, but, regardless...
The article seems to do a pretty good job of telling the story. It's not terribly interesting. The big consortium of Mexican avocado growers made a giant push probably around 2015-2016 and dumped a ton of money into American and Canadian markets to sell avocados. It makes sense. California can grow them just fine, but so can Mexico.
I think the more interesting aspect is that, considering how resource intensive they are, it might even be a legitimate good trade case, especially considering the size of the American/Canadian buying population versus the contention in viable domestic production area. This could be (or, really, has been) a very happy arrangement.
I worked on some agave projects around the same time, so I watched on the sidelines while this was going on and knew some people working on the Avocados from Mexico brand. That part was pretty interesting, too, because it was a state-level initiative.
Kinda looks like click bait generally. Per-capita US avocado consumption is about 9 lbs./y. That's a bit more than 1 per month of the large Mexican avacados. Somehow that's "crazy!!1"
You would think there would be some joy for all this: something Americans will happily eat that isn't "ultraprocessed" and/or meat, and a Mexican product that isn't narcotics or fossil fuel. But no. omg they're so "resource intensive!"
assuming they start planting trees NOW. it takes approx 4-5 years for a grafted avocado tree to start bearing fruit.
of all the Tariff hit products this is probably the fastest of any of them to do what a Tariff is meant to do... Make the product attractive enough to produce locally unattractive to import.
if growers trust that Trump is consistent and reliable enough to stick to his guns around tariffs (and he hasnt been to date, so thats a real leap of faith), then Avocados will be one of the first products that we'll see the effect of his Tariffs paying dividends to america.
most the other industries and products take a lot longer than 4-5 years to "flip the switch" and start producing locally in numbers large enough to counter the imported numbers.
I haven't seen him do much to bolster that industry other than the tariff... so it may never kick off. What might happen is the "Fad" for avo products might just die off and by 4-5 years comes around it might not be a product in demand anymore.
Edit: oh also, 25% tariff might not BE ENOUGH of a price increase to affect the import numbers at all as well... its hard to know what the final straw is, in the consumer space. They can be fickle buggers.
That's just the time to maturity for fruit bearing though. What about, say, the water requirements? But, yes, I think we agree. I think this is a case where we shouldn't provide an incentive to American growers, because it's probably more advantageous to import avocados and grow other things instead.
The article seems to do a pretty good job of telling the story. It's not terribly interesting. The big consortium of Mexican avocado growers made a giant push probably around 2015-2016 and dumped a ton of money into American and Canadian markets to sell avocados. It makes sense. California can grow them just fine, but so can Mexico.
I think the more interesting aspect is that, considering how resource intensive they are, it might even be a legitimate good trade case, especially considering the size of the American/Canadian buying population versus the contention in viable domestic production area. This could be (or, really, has been) a very happy arrangement.
I worked on some agave projects around the same time, so I watched on the sidelines while this was going on and knew some people working on the Avocados from Mexico brand. That part was pretty interesting, too, because it was a state-level initiative.